Theology of Wagner’s Ring Cycle I: The Genesis and Development of the Tetralogy and the Appropriation of Sources, Artists, Philosophers, and Theologians

By Richard H. Bell

Wagner's Ring is one of the greatest of all artworks of Western civilization, but what is it all about? The power and mystery of Wagner's creation was such that he himself felt he stood before his work "as though before some puzzle." A clue to the Ring's greatness lies in its multiple avenues of self-disclosure and the corresponding plethora of interpretations that over the years has granted ample scope for directors and will no doubt do so well into the distant future. One possible interpretation, which Richard Bell argues should be taken seriously, is the Ring as Christian theology. In this first of two volumes, Bell considers, among other things, how the composer's Christian interests may be detected in the "forging" of his Ring, looking at how he appropriated his sources (whether they be myths and sagas, writers, poets, or philosophers) and considering works composed around the same time, especially his Jesus of Nazareth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Jan 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9781498235648

Book preview

1

Introduction

Scope and Significance of the Ring

Dawson-Bowling is not alone in making this sort of comment on Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen ( The Ring of the Nibelung ): ¹ [i]n its scope and its reach, in its grandeur of conception and abundance of episode, in its universal relevance and its richness of suggestion [. . .] it has no near rival anywhere in art. ² Even if one does not share such an assessment of the tetralogy one can make the simple point that of works regularly performed, the Ring is the longest work of Western classical music, ³ lasting around fourteen to fifteen hours. Derek Cooke writes that the poem of the Ring still stands as the most prodigious ‘opera libretto’ ever written. ⁴ He continues: It compresses into thirty-seven scenes, with the most decisive dramatic clarity and point, a story of phenomenal intricacy, involving thirty-four characters, sixteen of them main ones, each of whom has a sharply defined individuality [. . .]. ⁵ This poem is then married to highly complex music, ⁶ the orchestration alone being the most sophisticated up until that time. ⁷ Even if one does not like Wagner’s Ring (and there are great musicians who do not like it) its creation must nevertheless be considered a consummate achievement.

My own view is that the Ring is one of the greatest of all artworks of Western civilization and is certainly one of the most comprehensive in what it attempts to achieve. It addresses the fundamental concerns that have faced humanity down the millennia, such as power and violence, love and death, freedom and fate. The work, despite being set in what sometimes appears to be medieval times,⁸ is remarkably modern and has the capacity to address a whole gamut of issues from capitalism and the ecological crisis through to issues of gender and sexual ethics. It is understandable that Wagner took great pride in his Ring, presenting as it does a vast canvas of mythicized world history. He began work on the libretto in Autumn 1848 and when it was completed at the end of 1852 he had fifty copies privately published, one of which he sent to Franz Liszt on 11 February 1853, enclosing a letter in which he wrote: Mark my new poem—it contains the world’s beginning and its end!⁹ Three months earlier he wrote in a letter to Uhlig (18 November 1852), as he was completing the libretto: The whole thing will then be—out with it! I am shameless enough to admit it!—the greatest poem I have ever written.¹⁰ He then had the Herculean task of setting this to music, this being completed as late as November 1874.

Studying the Theology of the Ring

The artwork of four operas Das Rheingold (The Rhinegold), Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods) is based on Norse and Germanic mythology and epic which has been radically modified in the light of Greek epic, lyric, and tragedy, and a case can be made that Wagner appropriated this Greek tradition through the lens of Hegel.¹¹ In the Ring we appear to be dealing with inner worldly events, beginning as it does with a remarkable representation of the evolution of the natural order, moving then to the birth of consciousness, then to the fall of humankind through the theft of the Rhinegold.¹² The cycle finally culminates in the death of the heroic couple Siegfried and Brünnhilde which is followed by the death of the gods as their heavenly abode, Valhalla, is engulfed in flames. But although the work appears to be dealing with inner-worldly events, it is, as in all myth, attempting to point beyond this world. As Bultmann wrote: Mythology is the use of imagery to express the other worldly in terms of this world and the divine in terms of human life, the other side in terms of this side.¹³

To some extent my interests in this work parallel what I attempted in my 2013 study Parsifal, which involved a theological appreciation of the artwork in the light of the composer’s intellectual development.¹⁴ However, the Ring will pose some special challenges for Christian theology since it lacks the clear Christian symbolism found in Parsifal (e.g., the holy grail and holy spear) and it could be legitimately asked whether seeking any Christian theology in the work is a fruitless exercise. There is the added problem that whereas Wagner on a number of occasions affirmed that Parsifal was a Christian work,¹⁵ we have no such unambiguous utterance for the Ring. However, even if Wagner did not set out to present Christian theology in the Ring (and this can be debated) the power and mystery of Wagner’s creation was such that even he himself felt he stood before his work as though before some puzzle.¹⁶ In short, we are presented with an artwork whose avenues of self-disclosure are incalculable and whose interpretation is inexhaustible.

If one avenue of interpreting the Ring is as Christian theology, how can this be discerned? The first way is by studying Wagner’s appropriation and development of myth and saga, whether that be Norse, Germanic, Greek, or that found in literary sources. In my enquiry I will employ the sort of methods of tradition history employed by biblical theology. Here we are not concerned with an abstract, timeless sense of revelation¹⁷ but rather with a dynamic process occurring within the Testaments, Old and New, or across them. One approach is to seek revelation in the mutations (and even contradictions) that are perceived in this development.¹⁸ For the Ring I will be concerned with two sorts of tradition and mutations within that tradition. First, there is Wagner’s highly creative appropriation of a vast range of sources and here special attention will be paid to how, for example, Prünhilt of the Nibelungenlied and Brynhild of the Norse sources mutate into his Brünnhilde. The second set of traditions and mutations is the development of the Ring itself. As he worked on the libretto from 1848 to 1852 significant changes occurred, seen for example in the changing roles and character of Wotan, Siegfried, and Brünnhilde.

A second way of discerning Wagner’s theology is by studying his whole world of thought fashioned by the many philosophical and literary giants in which he immersed himself, either by his reading their work or by simply breathing the intellectual air in which he found himself. Two such figures to consider are Goethe and Hegel. He clearly knew Goethe’s Faust, a serious work of theology, very well, perhaps even knowing sections by heart. He may not have read so much Hegel, but even if he had never read a single work, the philosopher was in the very air he breathed. Wagner may not always be very good at acknowledging his debt to Hegel, and his debt may not always be intentional, but I will argue that the philosopher has influenced the very fabric of the Ring.¹⁹

A third way of discerning Wagner’s theology is in his use of allegory. This could answer an obvious objection to the current enterprise that if there is any theology it is primarily Norse and Germanic polytheism. By considering allegory (and myth) it may be that a Christian theology can be found not despite the pagan background but through it. So one of my central contentions is that Brünnhilde in various respects is a figure who points beyond herself to the redeemer figure of Christian theology.

Fourthly, theological themes could be found in the way the composer portrays various ideas through music and specifically through his use of leitmotifs, many of which are related to each through some family resemblance (e.g., the various nature motifs). Further these motifs mutate as when the Rheingold motif, first heard in its unforgettable joy and orchestration of Rheingold Scene 1 (bars 540–41–42; 556–57) in C major, and repeated in E♭ major in Götterdämmerung as Siegfried journeys down the Rhine (bars 843–44), mutates into a darkened and sinister form as the interlude comes to an end (bars 883–84), indicating that the rest of the journey will be ill-fated.²⁰ Such transformations of motifs are able to indicate not only the dramatic action or atmosphere but also theological ideas; the same is true when motifs are combined to present a canvas of related ideas as in the Prelude to Siegfried Act III. In addition, the music can have certain associations as when Brünnhilde approaches to announce to Siegmund his death and his hope of immortality; the music is reminiscent of solemn Church music and the orchestration resembles the Posaunenchor, popular to this day in German Churches.²¹

Fifthly, Wagner can be found to do his theology through the very form of his poetry. As he started work on the libretto of the Ring in 1848 with Siegfried’s Tod²² (later renamed Götterdämmerung) he had moved from a style of verse writing we find in Lohengrin with its characteristic end-rhyme to one of alliteration.²³ The term he used for such alliterative verse was Stabreim, probably adopting the term from Ettmüller, whose Die Lieder der Edda von den Nibelungen; Stabreimende Verdeut­schung he had borrowed from the Dresden Royal library.²⁴ This interest in Stabreim was to intensify as he worked further on the Ring in that in revisions to Siegfried’s Tod further Stabreim was introduced and he argued that this form of poetry was demanded by the subject matter²⁵ and in the later stages of writing the libretto we find examples of intense and sophisticated Stabreim.²⁶ The expression in his poetry, which can actually stand alone as a work of art, is then able to be intensified by the way he combines it with the music.

A sixth way in which his theology (together with ethics) is discerned is through his politics which he believed was mediated by his art. Wagner’s theology was the very opposite of a pietist quietism.²⁷ His political convictions were inextricably woven into his art and whatever moral censure one may make of the composer one can at least acknowledge that he was concerned to make the world a better place through his art; he genuinely believed that through his Ring Germany could be remolded and indeed transformed. It is no accident that as Wagner started work on the Ring he was very much bound up with political action, and that of a revolutionary nature.²⁸

Through these various means I claim that Wagner, intentionally or unintentionally, expresses his views on a whole range of issues such as death and immortality, sin and redemption, power and love, freedom and necessity, nature and creation, law and sexual ethics, and sexuality and gender. In order to discern these views we can, in addition to considering the above six points related to the Ring itself, consider the vast array of sketches (prose, poetic, musical) not only of the Ring but of other works, together with essays, diaries, and letters where, among other things, the composer reflects on his own creative process as well as his theological and philosophical views. All this material can be invaluable in discerning the theology of the Ring and I consider three examples. First, as he started work on the Ring he wrote Die Wibelungen (The Wibelungs), which functions as a preliminary study for his Ring cycle. One of the striking aspects of this World-History as Told in Saga (Weltgeschichte aus der Saga) is that the composer appears to make no clear distinction between history and myth and this raises various questions for the Ring in relation to myth and history. Secondly, around the same time, he composed prose sketches for an opera Jesus of Nazareth and although the work was never completed the material was not wasted since much of it ends up on the stage of the Ring.²⁹ Thirdly, he wrote essays on aesthetics such as Opera and Drama where, among other things, he discusses his total art-work (Gesamtkunstwerk) as a combination of music, drama, and dance.

Wagner’s Ring, I will argue, not only coheres with much Christian theology but also presents many challenges. To illustrate this I consider how Wagner’s theology relates to the towering figure of St Paul. Sometimes we find a similar message in both Paul and in Wagner’s Ring. Both stress the need for redemption through sacrifice: for Paul the sacrifice is that of God’s own Son, Jesus Christ (Rom 8:32); for Wagner, the sacrifice is that of Siegfried and Brünnhilde.³⁰ But there are also differences, and the example of the law is a good one to consider. Paul and Wagner share common elements in that both understand the law to have a condemning function and relate law to sin, something that I will explore in detail in volume 2. But their ethics are rather different. It is the case that when Paul discusses ethical issues he rarely appeals explicitly to Old Testament law³¹ and in 1 Corinthians 5–6 where he discusses ethical issues, including sexual ethics, he does not appeal to Old Testament law when he could have done so.³² However, Paul alludes to a number of Old Testament texts and his argument is guided to some extent by the Old Testament law.³³ One such case regards his negative teaching on homosexuality, which has caused so much controversy both within and without the Church, and a theme I will discuss in volume 2. In 1 Cor 6:9 the very word arsenokoitai (men who have sexual relations with men)³⁴ is formed from Lev 18:22.³⁵ Further in Rom 1:26–27, where Paul again condemns same-sex practices, he is guided by Old Testament views on homosexuality, even perhaps appealing to Lev 20:13 in Rom 1:32,³⁶ something which conservative Christians may need to consider in their utterances on the authority of scripture.³⁷ So although Paul was in many respects a radical theologian and radically reinterpreted the Old Testament with reference to justification by faith, we see clear elements of his past life as a Pharisee in his discussion of ethics. Wagner, by contrast, is much more iconoclastic (and incidentally may help the Church in its current controversies). Not only does he hold to the Lutheran view of justification by faith and that salvation is not ultimately dependent on works but he is in many respects against the Jewish law in matters of ethics. This does to some extent reflect his anti-Judaism³⁸ and we see how he confronts a religion of law in both his Jesus sketches and in the Ring. The sketches present the fundamental opposition of law and love. Jesus slays the law³⁹ (cf. Siegfried’s destruction of Wotan’s spear in Siegfried Act III Scene 2) and sets forth love, which is the law of life for all creation (das gesetz des lebens für alles erschaffene).⁴⁰ This opposition of law and love is acted out in Walküre. The love of Siegmund and Sieglinde is opposed by Hunding who calls upon the law, embodied in the goddess Fricka, to defend his rights. In Act II Scene 1 Fricka is appalled to discover that her husband Wotan, who is supposed to uphold law through his contracts, advocates what one could call situation ethics, the view that whatever one does should be guided not by law or rules, but by love. As Wagner’s mouthpiece, the god points out that those two are in love and Fricka should bestow that blessing on Siegmund’s and Sieglinde’s bond. It is not surprising that the stage direction accompanying Fricka’s following entry is breaking out in the most violent indignation.⁴¹ This opposition of law and love that we find in the sketches of Jesus of Nazareth and in the Ring is reflected in the discussions today about sexual morality; and it does not take much imagination to guess where the composer would stand if he were here today.

I suggest that although regarding salvation one could hold to the Reformation view of sola scriptura, this is simply naïve in regard to ethics. An ethics based solely on the Bible would lead to a catalogue of positions that few (fortunately) would hold to today: capital punishment, beating children with sticks, regarding the institution of slavery as morally acceptable. Ethical issues have to be addressed not only by considering the biblical traditions (which I and countless others value) but also the traditions of the Enlightenment and those in artworks such as the Ring cycle; indeed such traditions can enable one to read the Bible from a new perspective.⁴²

As well as challenging biblical ethics Wagner challenges Christian theology by raising issues that can be fundamental for Christian experience but which the New Testament witnesses simply do not address. I take the example of Brünnhilde calling Siegmund to Valhalla in Act II of Walküre. When he discovers that his beloved, Sieglinde, cannot follow him to Valhalla, he rejects immortality. He puts his love of Sieglinde first. It is in a way an expression of the decision many have taken regarding whether to put their love for a human being before their religious beliefs.⁴³ When Siegmund rejects this offer of immortality and life in Valhalla we hear the leitmotif that has been described as Siegmund’s Rebellion.⁴⁴ This recurs at Siegmund’s death and in Brunnhilde’s dialogue with Wotan in Act III Scene 3.⁴⁵ It was a decade and a half after composing this scene that Wagner was to relate it to the story of Radbod: He tells of Radbod, the Prince of Frisia, who, with one foot already in the font, leaped back when he heard that he would not meet his heathen father in Heaven (Siegmund!)⁴⁶ So Siegmund decides that he will choose Hella rather than be separated from his beloved. Wagner is not, of course, unique among dramatists and novelists in addressing such situations, although the way he does so is unique by his combination of drama, music, and dance.

Sources and the Study of Wagner

In Wagner’s later life we often know exactly what he was reading and when thanks to Cosima’s diaries.⁴⁷ Such detail may not be available for the key years of the genesis and development of the Ring but we still have so many sources available in the form of letters, diaries, essays, and sketches. Further, we have his Dresden library, which now contains 408 volumes, and his Wahnfried library of 2,301 volumes,⁴⁸ although we are often in the dark as to what he read and possessed in the years between leaving Dresden (May 1849) and his more settled existence after 1864 when he was rescued by King Ludwig II. In comparison with St Paul’s writing his letters, something I have researched for a number of years, we have so much more material for the composition of the Ring. But there is also a distinct disadvantage in researching Wagner: he was very good at covering his tracks. This is seen in a number of ways. First, he was very good at drawing a veil over his indebtedness to other composers, most notably Berlioz and Mendelssohn. His obscuring of his debt to Berlioz will be discussed in chapter 5 in relation to his Faust Overture. In relation to Mendelssohn, a good example is his probable debt to Mendelssohn’s Overture Die Märchen von der schönen Melusine, where the arpeggios remind one immediately of the accompaniment to the Rheinmaidens in Rheingold Scene 1.⁴⁹ He does elsewhere refer to the myth of Melusine⁵⁰ but nowhere is there any extant reference to Mendelssohn’s Overture. Secondly, in addition to his silence on such issues he even went to the point of falsifying his life history and artistic development not only in his Autobiographic Sketch and autobiography My Life but also in his rewriting of his Annals. We will see an example of this in the next chapter as we consider the development of the Ring.

1

. Subsequently referred to as Ring.

2

. Dawson-Bowling, Experience,

2

:

147

.

3

. Cf. Deathridge, Beginnings,

7

.

4

. Cooke, End,

74

.

5

. Cooke, End,

74

.

6

. As we shall see in the discussion of sexuality and gender in volume

2

, Wagner considered the masculine poet to fertilise the feminine music in his marriage of word and tone.

7

. The size of the base orchestra (excluding any extra players on stage or say the addition of the organ for the Prelude to Rheingold) is

107

: sixty-four strings; fifteen woodwind, seventeen brass, five percussion, and six harps (SW

10

.

I

.

1

: X). A number of these players double on other instruments such that the orchestral size is even greater in terms of the instruments.

8

. As we shall see, Wagner often strips figures such as Siegfried of his medieval courtly background.

9

. SL

281

; SB

5

:

189

.

10

. SL

275

; SB

5

:

118

.

11

. See chapters

4

and

6

below.

12

. Also in Götterdämmerung we learn of the devastation of nature by Wotan, the chief god (WagRS

281

).

13

. Bultmann, Mythology,

10

n. 

2

.

14

. Bell, Parsifal,

2013

.

15

. Bell, Parsifal,

224

–

27

.

16

. Letter to August Röckel,

23

August

1856

(SL

356

–

57

; SB

8

:

152

).

17

. Cf. Knight, Revelation through Tradition,

180

.

18

. A stark example to consider is the way the idea of life after death developed in the Psalms: it is denied in Psalm

88

but then affirmed in Psalms

49

and

73

(cf. Gese, Schriftverständnis,

17

). An example across the Testaments is how the sacrifices of the Old are mutated into the sacrifice of Jesus Christ in the New.

19

. It may also be worth adding that the debt of biblical theology to Hegel is also often unintentional (and hence often unacknowledged), a clear exception being Vatke, Biblische Theologie (Bultmann, Vatke).

20

. Holloway, Motif,

19

.

21

. Cf. Bell, Parsifal,

98

n. 

66

.

22

. Throughout I will, according to Wagner’s own orthography, use the apostrophe in Siegfried’s Tod (Siegfried’s Death).

23

. Note that any rhyming in the first version appears to be accidental. See the very opening: Third Norn Was wandest du im Western; Second Norn Was wobest du im Osten (Haymes, Ring of

1848

,

66

,

68

).

24

. He borrowed this work

21

October

1848

to

29

January

1849

and he started using the term Stabreim in his

1849

essay Artwork of the Future (PW

1

:

132

; GSD

3

:

102

).

25

. See chapter

3

below.

26

. See Siegmund’s Winterstürme wichen / dem Wonnenmond [. . .] (Walküre Act I Scene

3

(WagRS

134

), discussed volume

2

chapter

3

).

27

. I will return in volume

2

to how Wagner’s approach to theology and politics parallels that of Ernst Käsemann.

28

. This concern with politics continued throughout Wagner’s life although his views changed to some extent. Political concerns, often of a rather odious nature, are also propagated in the Bayreuther Blätter, a journal which ran from

1878

to

1938

under the editorship of Hans von Wolzogen, and Wagnerians are often prone to employ the composer to further their political aims (see the example of Enoch Powell, discussed in Bell, Redemption,

73

n. 

8

).

29

. See chapter

7

below and volume

2

chapter

2

30

. See volume

2

chapter

11

.

31

. For rare cases where he does quote the Old Testament to make a theological point, see Rom

13

:

8

–

10

;

1

 Cor

9

:

9

;

14

:

34

–

35

; Eph

6

:

2

. The Pauline authorship of the last two texts has been questioned.

32

. In fact, his argument may sound a little strange. E.g., he argues you cannot be one flesh with a prostitute since you are one flesh with Christ (

1

 Cor

6

:

15

–

17

).

33

. The actual extent of this influence is hotly disputed. Rosner, Ethics,

3

–

13

, gives an excellent overview of the debate. Rosner’s own view (which actually focuses on

1

 Cor

5

–

7

) is that Paul was very much guided by Old Testament scripture and his approach contrasts to that of Harnack, Briefen, Lindemann, Toragebote, and others.

34

. On the translation, see Schrage, I Korinther I,

432

.

35

. Lev

18

:

22

: "You shall not lie (koitēn) with a male (meta arsenos) as with a woman."

36

. See Loader, "Romans

1

,"

145

.

37

. Lev

20

:

13

declares the death penalty for a man who lies with a male as with a woman.

38

. I use the term anti-Judaism for a negative view of the Jewish religion and antisemitism (deliberately not hyphenated) for a negative view of the Jewish people.

39

. PW

8

:

300

; DTB

249

.

40

. PW

8

:

301

; DTB

249

.

41

. WagRS

142

.

42

. It is worth emphasizing here that among the many reasons for abolishing slavery in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century were Enlightenment values, which in turn enabled a new reading of scripture (e.g., Phlm

15

–

16

). One also wonders whether the movement to ordain women in the Church of England would ever have happened without the earlier rise of feminism.

43

. If I may give an example from my personal experience, a single woman in a Church in which I worked had some years previously fallen in love with a non-Christian but decided not to marry him largely because St Paul enjoined Christians not to be mismatched with unbelievers (

2

 Cor

6

:

14

). Putting her faith before her love had led to much distress and unhappiness in her life. Paul provided the principle but did not address (at least in his extant writings) the serious existential issues that arise from it.

44

. Sabor, Walküre,

113

. See Act II bar

1619

(in subsequent references to bars I will use the nomenclature II.

1619

). The motif then recurs at II.

1621

ff.

45

. Walküre II.

2001

,

2003

; III.

1019

–

25

. See the discussion of this scene in volume

2

chapter

11

.

46

. CD

21

July

1871

.

47

. I found this extremely helpful in studying his use of Gfrörer’s Geschichte des Urchristenthums in relation to Parsifal (see Bell, Parsifal,

212

–

15

).

48

. I am grateful to Frau Kristina Unger of the Richard-Wagner-Museum for providing me with these precise figures. A number of volumes are missing from the Dresden library (see the list of twenty-nine titles given in Westernhagen, Bibliothek,

111

–

13

) and, as I will argue in chapter

5

below, fourteen volumes now in the library were added after Wagner fled the city in May

1849

.

49

. This similarity was brought to my attention by Roger Allen. It is also discussed briefly in Nattiez, Androgyne, 285

.

50

. See "Annalen

1866

–

1868

" (KB

2

:

3

): Melusine; fontaine de soif. He had christened a stream near Triebschen Fontaine de Soif (CD

23

September

1870

) from the legend of Melusine. Cf. letter to Cosima

17

April

1866

(SB

18

:

122

; Bauer, Briefe,

444

). See also CD

27

July

1871

;

23

June

1872

;

13

June

1873

.

2

Genesis and Development of the Ring

Questions concerning the Genesis and Development of the Ring

Studying the genesis and development of the Ring may appear to be a cumbersome addition to understanding an artwork that is complicated enough. Would it not be better simply to study the final form since this after all this is what we experience in the theatre? One could compare the Ring to certain books of the Bible that have evolved over time, some over a long period, such as Isaiah or the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament), others over a shorter time, such as John’s Gospel. Some theologians have maintained we should concern ourselves only with the final form (or more precisely the final forms ) of the biblical canon and ignore the successive sedimentary layers in the work of biblical theology. ⁵¹ Other have, rightly in my view, stressed that in order to understand the theology of these works it is essential to try to discover something of the way the books and individual ideas within the books developed. Research on the Ring has likewise taken an interest in how it was forged, ⁵² and whereas in biblical studies one often has to engage in much inspired (or not so inspired) guesswork in trying to discern how the Pentateuch or John’s Gospel evolved, with the Ring we have, as I indicated in the previous chapter, much material at our disposal. In my own endeavour to study the forging of the Ring I will to some extent draw on the insights developed in biblical theology. ⁵³ Applying such methods to the Ring, focussing on the mutations in the tradition, will bring out facets of the work that could otherwise be missed. Goethe’s words to the composer, conductor, and music teacher Carl Friedrich Zelter in a letter of August 1803 could well be applied to his Faust and to the Ring: We do not get to know works of nature and art as end-products; we must grasp them as they develop (im Entstehen) if we are to gain some understanding of them. ⁵⁴

A comparison of the development of the Ring and Faust is instructive. It took Goethe around sixty-one years (on and off) to complete his Faust.⁵⁵ If we date Wagner’s first work on the Ring as the Autumn of 1848 with his sketches of Der Nibelungen-Mythus and the libretto for Siegfried’s Tod and its ending with the musical composition of the final bars of Götterdämmerung⁵⁶ in November 1874 then we have a period of twenty-six years for his work (again on and off) on the Ring. However, this figure of twenty-six years fails to take account of two factors. First, he had clearly given some preliminary thought to the project, certainly for months and possibly for a few years. As external evidence we can turn to Eduard Devrient’s diary for 1 April 1848, which tells that at 5 pm that day Wagner had picked him up to go for a walk during which he told him of a new plan for an opera based on the Siegfried legend.⁵⁷ This coheres with Wagner’s Communication to My Friends (1851) where he writes that even during the time of the musical composition of Lohengrin (completed 28 April 1848) two subjects which seemed as one had usurped my poetic fancy: Siegfried and Friedrich Barbarossa.⁵⁸ His Friedrich I had in fact been first sketched back in 1846 and, as I will argue, this work and his Siegfried were in fact intimately connected. How far we can push back the conception of his Ring is unclear since in that passage in Communication all he tells us is that when he first wrote the ideas for the work he had been considering the project for some time previously.⁵⁹ The second factor regarding the period of composition of the Ring is that it did not finish in November 1874 since in a sense it was only completed with the first performance of the complete cycle in August 1876. He had to oversee the completion of his theatre in Bayreuth, choose his artists, sort out costumes and stages designs, oversee the rehearsals (during which details were introduced as to how the work should be performed),⁶⁰ and direct the performance. This second factor highlights the limitations in comparing the Ring to Faust for whereas bringing the Ring to performance was essential for Wagner, Goethe showed relatively little interest in having his Faust performed; indeed Part II was not even intended to be performed.⁶¹

Vischer and Otto: Clues to the Genesis of the Ring?

Back in 1844, the writer and philosopher Friedrich Vischer (1807–87), based in Tübingen,⁶² had suggested in an influential essay that the Nibelung saga should be made into a grand heroic opera.⁶³ It is unclear whether Wagner knew of this and he never refers to it and in fact rarely refers to Vischer anyway.⁶⁴ Some think he knew it on the basis of his knowledge of the plans of Louise Otto (1819–95) for a Nibelung opera. She published three articles The Nibelungs as Opera (Die Nibelungen als Oper) in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik in 1845⁶⁵ and at the end of the year the libretto for the first act.⁶⁶ She explains that she was motivated to write the libretto by Vischer’s publication.⁶⁷ Newman argues that since Wagner read the journal he must have known of Otto’s work and if he had not already known Vischer, then this would have drawn him to it.⁶⁸ Hence, [t]he conclusion that he had read Vischer seems inescapable.⁶⁹ It has been suggested that a libretto sent to Wagner by Gustav Klemm, a Dresden Court official, with the request he set it to music was that of Louise Otto’s Die Nibelungen.⁷⁰ This may at first seem probable since Wagner in his reply of 20 June 1845⁷¹ refers to the honoured poetess (die verehrte Dichterin)⁷² and female librettists were rare at this time. He declined the request, explaining that he is fully convinced that if anything of significance & validity for the history of art is to emerge from this particular genre (which I see as diametrically opposed to the ‘opera industry’ of the present day), this can only be so if the poet and musician are one & the same person.⁷³ He suggests that the honoured poetess" should turn to Ferdinand Hiller, who was looking for a text to set to music.⁷⁴

One problem in identifying the honoured poetess with Louise Otto is that her articles on Die Nibelungen als Oper first appeared in the Neue Zeitschrift on 12 August 1845⁷⁵ and it was only in November to December of that year that she published the first three scenes of her Nibelungen drama. However, there are a number of significant links between Wagner and Louise Otto that may or may not point to Wagner knowing of her libretto and hence knowing of Vischer’s suggestion for a Nibelungen opera. First of all, she admired Wagner and knew Rienzi⁷⁶ and shared not only Wagner’s view about the triviality of the majority of opera material⁷⁷ but also his revolutionary ideals.⁷⁸ They did in fact correspond, but first on 26 September 1853, where he thanks her for her letter and explains he knew of her already (but does not mention her Nibelungen libretto).⁷⁹ He adds that he knew of her article of 1852.⁸⁰ Secondly, he may have known of Otto in the mid-1840s via Niels Gade (1817–90), a Danish composer, whom Mendelssohn had appointed deputy conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and who was a friend of Schumann. Otto relates that on publishing the first act of her libretto (1845) she had received letters upon letters from German musicians, the last being from Gade. He had visited her in Meissen and then in Dresden in around 1845–46.⁸¹ We do know Gade met Wagner in Dresden when he attended the rehearsals and performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in April 1846⁸² and one wonders whether Otto was also present. According to Gade, Wagner told him on this occasion about his own Nibelungen plan: I must come to grips with the ancient Edda poems which are much more profound that our medieval poems (die sind viel tiefsinner als unsere mittelalterlichen).⁸³ The third indication that Wagner knew of Otto’s libretto is that in her third article she sets out some of the significant voices as follows: Brunhilde and Chriemhilde (Wagner’s Gutrune) as sopranos; Siegfried as tenor, Gunther as Baritone and Hagen as bass.⁸⁴ Wagner’s voices correspond exactly to this. Fourthly, her Act I Scene 2 with the choir of the vassals is reminiscent of Wagner’s Siegfried’s Tod/Götterdämmerung Act II.⁸⁵

I think it is plausible that Wagner knew something of Otto’s libretto even though, as Deathridge points out, there is no concrete evidence that Wagner knew the work of either Vischer or Otto.⁸⁶ But nevertheless it is instructive to contrast the approaches of Vischer and Wagner, for much of what Vischer writes about the possibilities of an opera based on the Nibelung saga is contradicted by Wagner. So Vischer points to the ways such an opera could extol the virtues of German culture and the Germanness of the heroes as found in the Nibelungenlied.⁸⁷ He argues that a work such as Gluck’s Alceste and Iphigenie may emphasize heroism but has the distinct disadvantage of being placed in a foreign land. Something indigenous, something national is required; and although Goethe’s Iphigenie has breathed Germanness into the Greek tragedy, he nevertheless has separated it from the ground of the fatherland. Vischer argues that German material should lead in another direction other than that of the Greeks, even if Goethe has managed to bring German spirit into it.⁸⁸ In many ways Wagner’s approach is quite the opposite to Vischer’s. He has mixed the Nibelungenlied with Greek culture (epic and tragedy) and on one level has not produced anything that is particularly German,⁸⁹ composing a libretto where the words deutsch and Deutschland fail to appear!⁹⁰ This though needs to be tempered by the view that in the Ring Wagner was not so much reflecting German culture but creating Germany.⁹¹ This is a subject to which I will return.

Another stark difference between the two is that whereas Vischer praises the Nibelungelied for not having the interaction of the gods,⁹² Wagner has introduced them. One could argue that had Wagner known Vischer’s article then it is ironic that he has taken various cues from him but not in the sense that Vischer wished. So whereas in the Edda (Prose Edda)⁹³ Brünnhilde is a Valkyrie, in the proposed opera Vischer says she should become, as in the epic, a human woman (Wagner’s Brünnhilde is divine but becomes human at the end of Walküre). Vischer in fact makes a number of comparisons between the Nibelunglied and the Edda which are instructive and could well have given Wagner various ideas. Another example is that Vischer discusses the way the songs of the Edda (Elder Edda) could inform the Nibelungenlied. He asks why Brünnhilde is so angry with Siegfried in Nibelungenlied. The answer lies in the Elder Edda. Here Siegfried was her fiancé but Kriemhild’s mother (i.e., Gudrun’s mother, Grimhild) gives him a love potion so he forgets Brünnhilde and burns in love for Gudrun! This then explains why Brünnhilde wants to plot against Siegfried, something not made clear in the Nibelungenlied. Further, there are some limited similarities between Wagner and Vischer in that Vischer highlights in the Nibelungenlied what Wagner has also stressed in his poem: the curse on the gold and the prophecy of the downfall of the Nibelungen through the Meerweiber.⁹⁴

Friedrich I

A significant step in the genesis of the Ring are the sketches for a five-act work Friedrich I, depicting his life from the Roncalian Diet down to his entry on the Crusade.⁹⁵ This first brief sketch (Text I) is dated 31 October 1846, but two additions were made, the second of which was in the Winter of 1848–49.⁹⁶ Wagner’s presentation of the composition of this work is not straightforward.⁹⁷ In the Annals he dates the original composition to 1848, linking it to Siegfried’s Tod and Die Wibelungen: "Sketched in my head Barbarossa in five acts. Passed on to Siegfried by way of a prose work on his historical significance: Die Wibelungen."⁹⁸ Similarly, My Life dates the composition to 1848.⁹⁹ However, this simply cannot be correct since, as we have seen, the original plan was dated 31 October 1846. We can definitely say that the second addition can be dated sometime after December 1848 and the first addition sometime before December 1848 (when he changed his style of writing). The question is why Wagner wishes to give the impression that it was composed 1848–49. The answer would seem to be that he wished to give to the public the idea that he was moving from grand opera to spoken drama to music drama and which would give the impression in the later phase that he was going back to the Urdeutsch and away from French Grand Opera.¹⁰⁰ So we have a double falsification: first in claiming the work was to be a spoken drama when it was meant to be a Grand Opera¹⁰¹ and secondly dating the whole work on Friedrich to 1848–49. As he dictated My Life he must have had the sketches of Friedrich in front of him¹⁰² and he does appear then to falsify the actual facts (as he has done in the Annals).¹⁰³

As pointed out above, Friedrich I has some key connections to his Nibelungen project¹⁰⁴ and despite falsification of chronology what he writes in Communication to My Friends¹⁰⁵ does throw light on the relationship between Friedrich and the Ring. He writes that "[e]ven during the musical composition of Lohengrin, midst which I had always felt as though resting by an oasis in the desert, both these subjects had usurped my poetic fancy: they were ‘Siegfried’ and ‘Frederic Barbarossa.’—Once again, and that the last time, did Myth and History stand before me with opposing claims."¹⁰⁶ But then he came to see that placing Siegfried and Friedrich I side by side, the latter appeared as a historical rebirth of the old-pagan Siegfried.¹⁰⁷ He claims in My Life that he gave up his Friedrich I for the Ring in 1848¹⁰⁸ and his rationale is expressed in Communication to My Friends in this way: Had I chosen to comply with the imperative demands of History, then had my drama become an unsurveyable conglomerate of picture incidents (ein unübersehbares Konglomerat von dargestellten Vorfällen), entirely crowding out from view the real and only thing I wished to show.¹⁰⁹ He therefore felt himself pushed to engage in myth. In order to make plainly understandable both my hero and the relations that with giant force he strives to master, only to be at last subdued by them, I should have felt compelled to adopt the method of Mythos, in the very teeth of the historic material.¹¹⁰ This would then lead to a fundamental contradiction in that he wanted to treat Friedrich as a historical figure yet this would fail to get to the essence of the matter.¹¹¹ But if he were to complete Friedrich he argues that as a historical work it could only appear as a spoken drama: it could only be dealt with as a spoken play, and by no manner of means as a drama set to music.¹¹² He adds: "In that period of my life when I conceived Rienzi, it might perhaps have struck me to regard the ‘Rothbart,’ also, as an opera subject: now, when it was no longer my purpose to write operas, but before all to give forth my poetic thoughts (meine dichterischen Anschauungen) in the most living of artistic forms, to wit in Drama, I had not the remotest idea of handling a historico-political subject otherwise than as a spoken play."¹¹³ Although Wagner does not falsify the nature of Jesus of Nazareth as he does Friedrich, there are occasions when he is slightly ambiguous about the nature of the work.¹¹⁴

Die Wibelungen

As preparatory study for his Ring Wagner composed two works, Die Wibelungen and his Nibelungen-Mythus. The Annals suggest Die Wibelungen was written before his October sketch for the Nibelungen-Mythus.¹¹⁵ However, although it is highly likely that he had started work on Die Wibelungen in 1848 in order to work out ideas for the Nibelungen-Mythus (see above), the writing on the same sort of green paper that he used for Jesus of Nazareth together with the use of Latin script and preference for small letters actually suggests a date of early 1849.¹¹⁶

Die Wibelungen is highly significant in that Wagner expresses some of his fundamental ideas on the relation of myth to history.¹¹⁷ Further, he associates the key figures of Siegfried, Friedrich Barbarossa, and Jesus and, perhaps more surprising, he relates the last two also to Wotan. This work is a key to understanding the theology of the Ring and hence I shall be looking at this somewhat neglected work in some detail.

In bringing together myth and history Die Wibelungen has an association with both the Ring (in that this is based on historical figures) and with the Jesus of Nazareth sketches,¹¹⁸ but not with the Friedrich I sketches, which were meant to be purely historical.¹¹⁹ In the short preface Wagner explains that he was "occupied with the reawakening of Frederick the Red-beard, so longed for by so many, and strove with added zeal to satisfy an earlier wish to use my feeble breath to breathe poetic life into the hero-Kaiser for our acting stage."¹²⁰

The first section concerns The Ur-Kinghood (Das Urkönigthum),¹²¹ whose origin is preserved in sagas. The idea of the kingly power restricted to one favoured race (bei einem bestimmten Geschlechte) lies deep in the people’s consciousness, resting on the memory of the Asiatic ur-home of the ur-folk whose Stem-father was sprung from the Gods.¹²² With the Sint-Fluth or Great Deluge the largest island of the northern world-sea was the highest mountain-range of Asia, the so called Indian Caucasus,¹²³ which is the cradle of both the present Asiatic peoples and those who wandered into Europe. Here is the ancestral seat of all religions, of every tongue, of all these nations’ Kinghood. ¹²⁴ We find here therefore the view, current at that time, that the European peoples had wandered into Europe from the Indian Caucasus, the highest point of the earth, which survived the Great Deluge that had covered